


Resistance

by postapocalyptic_cryptic



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Cartoon), Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Dehumanization, Electrocution, First Aid, Gen, Hunter Whump (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), Hurt Hunter (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), Hurt/Comfort, Kamino is awful, Platonic Cuddling, Protective Alpha-17, Protective CC-2224 | Cody, Rescue, Seizures, Sibling Bonding, Torture, Whump, sorry hunter but you're just very hurtable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29867850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postapocalyptic_cryptic/pseuds/postapocalyptic_cryptic
Summary: One time Hunter was prepared for torture and one time he was tortured.(With electricity. They're going to shock him. He is going to be electrocuted).
Relationships: Alpha-17 & Hunter (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), CC-2224 | Cody & Hunter (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), Crosshair & Hunter & Tech & Wrecker (Star Wars: The Bad Batch)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 53





	1. Seven

**Author's Note:**

> vod: brother (plural vode)  
> [x]'ika: an endearment  
> di'kut: stupid, jerk, idiot, etc.
> 
> ALSO this depicts clone trooper "training" which is basically child abuse so. Yeah.
> 
> FORGOT TO MENTION that Jynn refers to Hunter as "12" because his ID number is ET-012, something I've mentioned in another fic but that has no relation to this one whatsoever lmao.

Jynn’s hand snaps across Hunter’s face. He turns with it but even so, it leaves him seeing stars. The hand returns before he can get his wits about him, taking his chin and jerking it up until he’s looking her full in the face. 

She snarls. He snarls back. 

“Listen to me,  _ trooper,”  _ she hisses. “I know you think you’re tough shit, walking around like you own the place, but you’re  _ nothing.  _ You are a  _ tool.  _ And do you know what we do to tools? We find their breaking points.” The hand on Hunter’s jaw tightens and tears swim in his eyes, involuntary and stinging. There aren’t any fingers in his mouth this time, though. Fair enough, even though it wasn’t Hunter that bit her, it was Crosshair.

“I think,” she says, and that tone of voice has never,  _ ever  _ meant anything good for Hunter, “it’s time to see whether or not the Kamis considered every possible  _ weakness  _ when they thought you up.” Jynn pushes him away and it’s only the grace that’s been beaten into him over seven neverending years that keeps him from stumbling. “Stand up straight, trooper,” she barks. 

Hunter complies, squaring his shoulders and planting his feet. They’re alone in this training room. No armor, no siblings, no Kaminiise, just Hunter and Jynn and the weapons at Jynn’s belt and the knowledge that the cameras on the wall were  _ never  _ meant to protect Hunter. 

“Good.” Jynn’s hand drifts to her belt and Hunter grits his teeth. “Someday,” she says, taking a step towards him, “you are going to fail. You are going to fail and you will be captured and the ones who took you will have no mercy.” She begins to pace a slow circle around him, no less dizzying for its pace. “They won’t stop to think, ‘Oh, poor ‘12, he’s only a kid, we’d better go easy and make sure he’s not  _ permanently damaged’”— _ those words are hissed in his ear and he doesn’t turn his head, doesn’t even twitch—“They’re going to think about how to break you apart.

“They are going to find what makes you different and they are going to use it to make you  _ scream.”  _

Hunter shivers. “Isn’t that the idea of torture?”

Jynn, in front of him once more, smiles with entirely too many teeth. “I prefer to call it ‘life.’ But preferences are preferences,” she allows. “For example, would you prefer to wear a mouthguard, or would you prefer to break your teeth?” From her belt, she produces one of the chewy plastoid guards they use in certain forms of hand-to-hand and flight training. Hunter can taste it already, feel the way it presses against the back of his throat and makes saliva pool in his mouth.

He holds his hand out. “Why not?”

“Good boy,” she drawls as she hands it over. “Now, listen up.” She pulls her shock staff from her belt and snaps it to its full length. “The idea of this game is to stay as still as you can for as long as you can. Are you ready?”

Hunter shoves the guard in his mouth and gives her his best growl. 

“Here we go.”

* * *

Hunter misses latemeal. Then, he misses lights out. Then, he misses lights-out-for-real-this-time-Alpha-17’s-coming. Then, he misses the fifteen-minute window in which Tech usually shuts his ‘pad off. 

His knees hit the ground at 1943. He starts screaming at 2038. He loses feeling throughout most of his body by 2154. He stops screaming at 2223. Things begin to get hazy after 2300. 

She’s not consistent with the shocks. In the beginning, they come in quick succession, long holds of the live end of the staff to his ribs and back until he’s biting the mouthguard so hard his jaw aches. Then, she starts circling him again, giving him quick, sharp jabs with the thing and then letting up to watch the electricity course through his body. 

Hunter can feel it on the inside of his skull, scraping along neural pathways that don’t belong in a human brain and racing down the column of his spine. 

He’s not sure what time it is when she stops. 

* * *

He remembers, in halves and hazy blinks of heavy eyes, being dragged down the hallway that led from the training room back to the barracks. Every nerve feels raw, as though Jynn had taken the time to flay him alive and leave him somehow able to stumble alongside her, her hands like vices on his arms and the smell of burnt hair in his nose. 

Pain stops being comprehensible after a little while. 

She punches in the passcode to 99’s barracks like the keypad has personally wronged her. She shoves Hunter through the open door and says, “See you tomorrow, ‘12.” The door closes. 

Hunter lays spread-eagled on the cool floor, staring into the dark and wondering how many of the colors he sees are real. Behind his eyes a migraine begins to gather itself, lighting up shattered nerves and dripping red and hot and thick down his chin. Blood. He’s bleeding.

Where…?

“Hunter. Hunter!”

“Shh, Wrecker, be quiet. Tech, get the lights.” 

Ow. No. Please don’t get the lights. Hunter can feel the wires in the walls. 

“Holy shit!”

“Oh my gods, she killed him. He’s going to die.”

“Do we get Alpha?”

Maybe. Maybe not. Hunter’s not up to making decisions right now. 

Wait. Someone has to—

They’re running a simulation and he has to-

Don’t let them take—

“Kid. Hey, open your eyes for me.” Someone’s voice rumbles deep through Hunter’s head, ripping off the carefully constructed scabs on his psyche. “Come on, kih’vod, show me those eyes.” 

Hunter tries and, by some miracle of the gods or the Force or whateverthefuck, he succeeds. Alpha-17 is leaning over him, buzzed hair and crooked nose cruel in the white ‘fresher lights. 

“Good. Good job. Do you see my finger?” 

Sort of. If he squints, Hunter can just make out what might be the tip of a finger. It’s awfully close to his face. 

“Follow it. No, not with your head. Don’t move your head, just your eyes.” The finger moves and Hunter tries to follow it with his eyes. A hand meets the side of his head, holding it in place. Touch burns like lightning. “Come on, Hunter, eyes only. Follow my finger with your eyes.”

The finger is gone. Hunter’s not sure it was ever there. He wants to see it, wants to do well at something and show Alpha that he can-

“Hey, no, don’t cry.”

Alpha is right. Hunter shouldn’t cry because wherever the tears fall on his face, the burning comes back sevenfold, eating away at his skin, and Hunter’s genuinely afraid he might see bone the next time he looks in the mirror. 

“Stay with me, Hunter. Come on, you can do it. Don’t make me call Ti, kid.” 

Shaak Ti is nice. She’s got a nice voice and she’s all buzzy like a weird light bulb. She kept the Kaminiise from decommissioning Tech a few years back. Would Shaak Ti step in if Hunter was dying?

Is Hunter dying? He doesn’t want to die. Not yet. Not until he sees something that isn’t an ocean through a viewport. He doesn’t want to die. This feels like dying.

“...In with me, hold, then out. Hey, listen to me, di’kut. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. That’s better.” 

Hunter risks opening his eyes again. Alpha’s still above him, swimming in a halo of light and ‘fresher tiles. Are they sitting in the showers? He tries to ask, but his mouth feels just as fried as the rest of him. His vision shifts in time with the alternating current in the sonic’s wiring and he wishes he was unconscious. 

“I know, vod’ika,” Alpha says. Hunter’s never heard him so soft before. “Okay, hold still for me.”

_ The idea of this game is to— _

A cold cloth touches Hunter’s face and he  _ burns,  _ thrashing away from the pain but he hits his head against something hard and-

Oh. It’s just Alpha. He’s wiping the blood from around Hunter’s mouth, careful and concise and unflinching in the face of Hunter’s agony. His scarred lips are pulled white and bloodless. 

“Easy, trooper. You’ll regret it if I leave this for you to wash off in the morning.” 

* * *

Mercifully, Alpha is quick in his ministrations, cleaning and bandaging Hunter to the best of his abilities before coaxing a bit of water into him and scooping him up in his arms like a Little. Like Hunter’s not halfway through his seventh growth cycle and nearly fully grown. Carefully, he carries Hunter out of the ‘fresher and back into the main room of the barracks. 

The burning has died down to a somewhat more tolerable buzzing and Hunter’s head feels fuzzy and wrung-out, like he’s just finished a round of intelligence testing and ran through a full tactical sim. When Alpha sets him down on his bunk in the middle of Wrecker, Tech, and Crosshair’s puppy pile, his eyes close almost immediately. 

Vaguely, he hears the quiet rumble of Alpha’s voice, underlined by higher, quicker interruptions from the rest of the ‘99. As though in a dream, he feels wide, callused hands brush his hair from his forehead and tuck a blanket around his shoulders. Tech and Wrecker settle down on either side of him and Crosshair leans against his legs. 

Hunter’s too far gone to tell them that touch still burns. He doesn’t care, anyway. 

Alpha turns off the lights when he goes. 


	2. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunter is visited by the ghost of electroshocks past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suffering, I am. Waited until the last minute to write a research paper, I did. Begged for an extension, I have. Here, the balm to my agony, I present you with.

He must have flinched. He must have flinched or winced or turned away or done something  _ stupid  _ when they put the stuncuffs on him because Big, Green, and Pissy lights up like a fucking Life Day tree. 

“Hey! I think this one doesn’t like electricity!” Green grabs the cuffs and holds them up for his partner to see, dragging Hunter’s hands with him. Hunter sighs, tipping his head back against the wall and trying to find that ‘calm, happy place’ Tech’s always talking about. Sounds like bullshit, but hey, first time for everything, right?

“What the fuck are you on about this time, Kyt?” Not-Green and Equally Pissy, Hunter’s Near-Human companion, slinks over to investigate Kyt’s discovery. “Show me.” 

Kyt drops the cuffs and Hunter lets his arms fall into his lap with an unceremonious  _ thud.  _ Not-Green stares down at him with distaste. Well, if they wanted dignity, they shouldn’t have cuffed him and dropped him on the floor. 

Kyt pulls out what must be the remote controls for the stuncuffs and presses a button. Hunter doesn’t get to see Not-Green’s reaction through the white-hot blitz of energy that surges through him. He grits his teeth and very resolutely does  _ not  _ yell. They’ve only just begun, after all. 

“See?” Kyt says. “It doesn’t like the electricity.” Hunter blinks up at him, clearing the spots from his vision. Kyt smiles with all his rotting teeth. “It’s  _ special.”  _

Not-Green looks down at Hunter for a long moment, expression stagnant and eyes cruelly analytical. Slowly, like oil on water, a grin spreads across his face, pulling at the scar across his lips. “Kyt,” he rasps. “Take the cuffs off it and get me the generator.” He nudges Hunter with his foot. “You know what? Water conducts electricity, too. Bring one of the hoses.” 

* * *

Once, Crosshair had bought them a six-pack of soda while they were stuck planetside in a sandstorm. Tech and Cross had liked it, Wrecker had been indifferent. Hunter hated it. It fizzed across his tongue and burned the roof of his mouth, tasteless and painful and syrupy-sweet all at once. It hurt on the way down, too, sparking its little CO2 bubbles all the way down his throat. 

Electrified water feels like bathing in soda. The energy prickles across his skin, reminding him where it’s been and the voltage and current and coil of wires in the machine that generated it. Everywhere it goes, Hunter’s muscles seize, tightening past the point of pain. He wonders if they’re strong enough to rip his tendons, snap his bones. 

He might be a little delirious. 

Kyt shuts the current off and Hunter slumps to the floor, wet and cold and shivering with unwanted exertion. His tormentors are standing high and not-quite-dry, rubber boots insulating their feet against the deadly centimeter of water on the floor. It’s murky with grit and tangy with blood and sweat. Hunter’s bitten through his lip. 

Not-Green, whose name might be Kader or Maker or Schaffer (it’s hard to hear anything over the ringing in his ears), sloshes forward until he’s standing over Hunter. One heavy boot falls on his wrist and Hunter tenses. Kader doesn’t press, though, just rests his foot there, a subtle restraint. “You feel like telling us where your buddy is yet?” 

Hunter meets his gaze with his best Wrecker impression, empty and uncomprehending. Wrecker’s always been the better actor, though, and Hunter’s not sure how well he pulls it off.    
“I already told you, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

Kader shifts his weight. “I’m not stupid, clone. You’re part of a strike force. There are four of you. I only have three in my possession. Where is the fourth clone?”

Hunter doesn’t know. Hopefully, whoever it is got out safely and is gathering an extraction team. “Look, man, sometimes intel is bad. Not the end of the world. Not worth frying someone’s—”

Kader steps back. “Turn it on.” 

Hunter’s mind collapses in on itself. 

* * *

“Sergeant? Can you hear me?” 

Hunter’s eyes don’t want to open.  _ Dried blood,  _ the part of his brain that still lives on Kamino supplies. “Mm,” he manages. 

“Good, good. Can you open your eyes?” 

Who  _ is  _ that? They’re not a vod, which means… Which definitely means they outrank Hunter. Hunter moves his arm. His gauntlet scrapes against the ground with a sloshing noise. What?

Painfully, he peels his eyes apart. It doesn’t make much of a difference. The world’s alight with imaginary colors and flashing lights and blotches that might be electromagnetic currents or might be figments of his fried imagination. Someone’s leaning over him. Their heart beats a strong double-time and they’ve got something powerful hanging at their waist.

“Thank you, Sergeant. Do you know where you are?” The voice connected to the body is very kind. 

Where is he? Water, pain, blood, dark…

_ Mission.  _ A botched mission, and he was captured, and they tortured him, and—

“Where are they?” he manages. “Where’s my team?” Hunter pushes himself upright on arms like gelatin. “Where’s my team?” 

Hands on his shoulders. “Stand down, Sergeant. Your team is fine. They’re waiting for you on the shuttle. Do you know where you are?”

“Dar’yaim,” he says. Somewhere beyond the person speaking to him, a vod laughs. “S’where on Lothal,” he amends. “Underground. Dunno… dunno beyond that.” 

“That’s alright,” the voice says. “That’s very good, actually. Now, let’s see about getting you back to your team. Commander, if you would be so kind…?”

A plastoid-covered arm wraps around Hunter’s ribs, just under his arms. On the opposite side, the man with the voice does the same. “Alright, Hunter, help me out,” the vod says.

Oh. Oh. Hunter knows that voice. “C’mmander Cody.” 

“Yeah, kih’vod. I leave you alone for what, two months, and this is what you do to yourself?” Cody huffs. Even through the haze that’s settled over his vision, Hunter can see the orange of his pauldron. “Now get your feet under you.”

Cody and the man who Hunter realizes must be General Kenobi (Holy shit. Holy shit. He’ll be processing that later.) begin to pull him up, and Hunter understands for the first time the numbing properties of cold water and lack of blood flow. 

It hurts. It burns like getting shocked all over again, and what’s left of Hunter’s vision goes black. He might pass out for a few moments, but he can’t be sure. Through it all, Cody keeps talking to him. 

“Come on, kid, up you get. Udessi, udessi, we’ve got you. Good job. I know, I know.” Cody presses closer to him, hiking him up on his shoulder until Hunter’s legs are straight and his feet are flat on the ground. He and the General do him the favor of pretending as though he’s standing under even an ounce of his own power. 

“Kip,” General Kenobi says, and it takes Hunter a moment to realize he’s speaking into a comm link. “We’re bringing the Sergeant out now.” 

_ “Copy that, sir. Ready and waiting.” _

Hunter thinks Cody might try to say something else, but his ears have suddenly started ringing. Loudly. An odd sensation blooms in his chest, like negative pressure but with an edge of urgency. “Cody,” he tries to say. “Cody, something’s wrong.” 

Then, his head sparks like lightning and he goes away for a while. 

* * *

“Hunter. Hey, you back with us?” This time, Hunter can actually  _ see  _ when he opens his eyes. Well, see better than before, anyway. Experience tells him it’ll probably be two days before he’s back to normal. 

Little gods, everything hurts. 

“I’m with you,” he croaks. Cody, who’d been kneeling in front of him, nods and steps back. 

Hunter’s on the ground again, lying on his side with someone’s hands holding him up and his arm under his head. They’ve moved him to the hall outside his cell. Seizure, then. He hasn’t had one of those in a long time. 

“Kip,” General Kenobi says, and he’s so close to the back of Hunter’s head that Hunter startles, deeply regretting it when the movement sets off a new set of back spasms. Cody snorts. “The Sergeant is conscious again. We’re going to continue as planned.” Then, to Hunter, “We’re only a few minutes from the exit. Even so, I think it would be best for one of us to carry you the rest of the way.” 

Hunter sits up and opens his mouth to protest, but Cody shoots him a glare, all the more deadly for his lack of helmet. “No,” he says. “We already tried walking, and you had a seizure. Suck it up and grab on.” 

Hunter sucks it up.

* * *

“Tech, stop.”

“You stop.”

“What— stop pushing me.”

“I’m not pushing you.”

“You’re elbowing me.” 

“That’s not the same thing.” 

“Oh, I’ll  _ show  _ you the same— Wrecker, let go!”

“Stop fighting. You’re going to wake the Sarge up.” 

“Too late,” Hunter mumbles, too tired to open his eyes. “‘S okay. Keep talkin’.” 

“Sorry,” Tech and Crosshair whisper in sync. 

Perched at the top of the bed, Tech resumes his task. Near as Hunter can tell, he’s dividing the front section of Hunter’s hair into little subsections and braiding them. It’s nice, a grounding counterpoint to the heavy-duty painkillers Kip had given him. Crosshair, sitting at Hunter’s side with his thigh pressed against Hunter’s arm, serves much the same purpose. He’d been the escapee, the one to hide away and comm for backup as soon as things had gone south. Now, in the tension of his posture, Hunter can feel his guilt. 

Wrecker, concussed and thus more sedate than normal, is somewhere off to Hunter’s left, not on the bed, but next to it. He breathes heavy and steady and Hunter turns closer to the sound. He’s warm now, and in clean, dry blacks. The pain is far away and the fuzzy feeling in his head is beginning to fade. 

Tech ties off one braid and begins the next, fingers brushing Hunter’s scalp and tugging gently at his hair. Hunter sighs. They’re okay. He’s okay. They survived.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow Bad Batch Brainrot while we wait for May 4. HMU on tumblr @postapocalyptic-cryptic-fic or @chiafett and may the Force be with you!


End file.
